An application of community psychology to social poverty in the United States: A cultural-historical analysis

Poverty and homelessness have been persistent problems in the United States of America since the early days of this country's existence. At the start of the 21st century, the prevalence of homelessness and hunger as the result of poverty had been consistently identified by the United States Conference of Mayors as being the most pressing and overwhelming social service problem facing their cities (United States Conference of Mayors, 2000, 2002). The historical failure of social welfare policy in the United States to solve, or to effectively and fully respond to, the presence and growth of domestic homelessness and poverty is the focus of the analysis presented in this study.; Using a systems approach based on the theories and methods of analysis set forth by the field of Community Psychology, the historical record of social scientific theory and social policy directed at poverty in the United States is analyzed to uncover and examine the level of influence and constraint that our predominant cultural value system has placed on the level of effectiveness in solving this social problem. The strategy of cultural mindscape analysis presented by Maruyama (1973, 1983) is used in the method cultural-historical analysis presented.; The cultural-historical analysis discovers support for the contention that culturally determined assumptions and beliefs have acted to direct social welfare policy's definitions and responses to social poverty away from the awareness and consideration of appropriate system-level determinants and strategies to poverty interdiction, and have instead acted to confine and direct the perception of poverty as being the result of individual aberration and deviance to a seemingly invariant set of social standards. These results suggest that the ability to conceptualize new approaches to solving the problem of social poverty, especially those that involve change at the system level, will require the ability to first identify and transcend the often unexamined cultural assumptions that have historically acted to constrain and limit both problem definition and response to homelessness and poverty. The implications of these findings and necessary areas for future study are discussed.